Sonos music system keeps tunes pumping

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published
7:00 pm EST, Sunday, February 27, 2005

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Keeping the tunes going at a house party - even different songs in multiple rooms - gets a lot simpler with a new digital music system that lets you wirelessly tap into music stored on a computer.

The stylish, well-conceived
Sonos Digital Music System
is designed for audiophiles with a large digital music collection that they want to access in high fidelity through something other than PC speakers.

While other so-called home media receivers also tackle this problem, they tend to additionally handle video and digital images.

Sonos sticks to music, and makes the streaming process seamless and relatively simple.

The Sonos system is also cleverly expandable, if decidedly pricey.

Sonos' $1,199 starter system includes software for tracking and cueing up music, two wireless hubs called ZonePlayers with built-in amplifiers that channel the music to speakers, and an iPod-like controller unit.

The setup is simple if you have a home network with a router and Wi-Fi wireless connectivity. I don't, so connecting a hub to my PC's music library - Sonos is compatible with Mac- or Windows-based systems - was a little more involved.

I spent several minutes wading through the user's manual as I installed the software, going to an FAQ page on Sonos' Web site to find a workaround.

A more user-friendly breakdown of how to even access my computer's network settings might have been more helpful but, ultimately, the link between my computer and the ZonePlayer worked. Within seconds, hundreds of tracks were cataloged on my computer and ready for playing.

It's not necessary to have a home network to run the system.

In such a configuration, one of the ZonePlayers must be connected to the computer with an Ethernet cable. Otherwise, it gets connected to your home network's router.

Additional ZonePlayers ($499 each) then stream the music wirelessly. The handheld controller, connected to all the hubs wirelessly, works for the whole system.

Sonos comes with the sort of options common to Windows Media Player or similar digital music software and high-end portable players. Users can select tracks by artist or album or genre, control audio settings, equalizer, and organize and save playlists, among other features.

Each "zone" or room where a ZonePlayer is set up can have separate settings, allowing users to stream different music over each hub simultaneously.

While Sonos is designed to support up to 32 ZonePlayer units at once, Windows XP only allows for 10 per computer used (additional controllers cost $399).

My apartment doesn't even have 10 rooms.

So I connected one in the living room and the other in the bedroom.

The living room unit was linked to the PC and to two speakers. The bedroom unit was only connected to another set of speakers.

The stylish Sonos controller, which has a color LCD interface screen and an iPod-like touch wheel to scroll through menus, makes cueing up music a simple process.

Within minutes I was playing N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" in the bedroom and Howie Day's "
Brace Yourself
" in the living room - wirelessly.

Add a few more rooms and a party, and the Sonos system can make the entire process of changing CDs at the stereo an inconvenience from a less civilized age. You'll still need to rip your CD collection to your computer, of course.

But while Sonos may sound ideal for someone who subscribes to an online music service, the device does not currently play copy-protected file formats. So if you've packed your computer with tracks from iTunes, Napster or MusicNow, you'll get an error message.

Sonos does, however, support unencumbered tracks in the MP3, Windows Media Audio, AAC and Wave formats. The company says it will begin supporting RealPlayer's Rhapsody tracks at the end of March and copy-protected WMA files by the end of the year.

The system can also play streamed audio from Internet radio sites, even if the computer is off or in sleep mode, as long as it connected to the Internet via a router.

The ZonePlayers also plays music stored on a networked attached storage device.

The system, the first product launched by the Santa Barbara-based company, is currently sold only through Sonos' Web site, but will be available by mid-March at several retailers.